Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of research from the social and behavioral sciences offering insight on how individuals, social groups and political systems come to understand and make decisions related to science, the environment, technology, and medicine.

Research in this area stretches across disciplinary boundaries, university departments, funding agencies and field-specific journals, is the subject of inquiry at journals like Science and Nature, debated in the media and at blogs, and the focus of top-selling books.

Indeed, as New Scientist magazine proclaimed in a recent cover story: "It may be high time US scientists put aside their own scepticism about the 'soft' social sciences, and embrace what these studies have to say" about the communication processes shaping debates ranging from climate change to stem cell research.

Enter the National Academies.  

Marshaling the very best of its convening and agenda-setting function, on May 20-21 in Washington, DC, the Academies will be hosting a prestigious 2-day Sackler Colloquia surveying the state-of-the-art of social science research on communication, connecting this research to its implications for science-related governance, policy and public engagement.

Highlights include:

• A keynote address by Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of the current best-seller Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.
• Presentations by a diversity of leading social scientists summarizing the state of knowledge in their fields.
• A roundtable featuring former and current White House Science Advisers Neal Lane, John Gibbon, and John Holdren (invited).
• Discussions by Arizona State President Michael Crow, New York Times journalist David Pogue, and PBS Nova producer Paula Apsell.

In one of the sessions, I will be joined by colleagues William Eveland and Dominique Brossard, reviewing research on how the media cover and portray science; the relationship to policy and societal decisions; how audiences find and use information, and the impact on attitudes, behavior and knowledge.

Other presentations by collaborators familiar to readers of this blog include Edward Maibach reviewing the role of research in science communication across the private, government and non-profit sectors; Anthony Leiserowitz proposing innovations related to climate change communication; and Dietram Scheufele integrating research across fields on the societal dynamics of science communication

I have posted the 2 day agenda below. You will want to register early by May 7. The event will be held in the historic National Academy of Sciences building, located at 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC, adjacent to the National Mall, U.S. State Department and Lincoln Memorial.

The event was organized by National Academies president Ralph Cicerone and Vice President Barbara Schaal, AAAS CEO Alan Leshner, Carnegie Mellon University's Baruch Fischhoff, and the University of Wisconsin's Dietram Scheufele.  Video will be available and summary papers by participants will be submitted for review and possible publication at the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.